Primed To Fight

REDMOND, Ore. — B.J. Soper took aim with his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and fired a dozen shots at a human silhouette target. Soper’s wife and their 16-year-old daughter practiced drawing pistols. Then Soper helped his 4-year-old daughter, in pink sneakers and a ponytail, work on her marksmanship with a .22-caliber rifle.

Deep in the heart of a vast U.S. military training ground, surrounded by spent shotgun shells and juniper trees blasted to shreds, the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard was conducting its weekly firearms training.

“The intent is to be able to work together and defend ourselves if we need to,” said Soper, 40, a building contractor who is an emerging leader in a growing national movement rooted in distrust of the federal government, one that increasingly finds itself in armed conflicts with authorities.

Those in the movement call themselves patriots, demanding that the federal government adhere to the Constitution and stop what they see as systematic abuse of land rights, gun rights, freedom of speech and other liberties.

Law enforcement officials call them dangerous, delusional and sometimes violent, and say that their numbers are growing amid a wave of anger at the government that has been gaining strength since 2008, a surge that coincided with the election of the first black U.S. president and a crippling economic recession.
Soper started his group, which consists of about 30 men, women and children from a handful of families, two years ago as a “defensive unit” against “all enemies foreign and domestic.” Mainly, he’s talking about the federal government, which he thinks is capable of unprovoked aggression against its own people.

The group’s members are drywallers and flooring contractors, nurses and painters and high school students, who stockpile supplies, practice survival skills and “basic infantry” tactics, learn how to treat combat injuries, study the Constitution and train with their concealed handguns and combat-style rifles.

“It doesn’t say in our Constitution that you can’t stand up and defend yourself,” Soper said. “We’ve let the government step over the line and rule us, and that was never the intent of this country.”

Law enforcement officials and the watchdog groups that track the self-styled “patriot” groups call them anti-government extremists, militias, armed militants or even domestic terrorists. Some opponents of the largely white and rural groups have made fun by calling them “Y’all Qaeda” or “Vanilla ISIS.”

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism, said there were about 150 such groups in 2008 and about 1,000 now. Potok and other analysts, including law enforcement officials who track the groups, said their supporters number in the hundreds of thousands, counting people who signal their support in more passive ways, such as following the groups on social media. The Facebook page of the Oath Keepers, a group of former members of police forces and the military, for example, has more than 525,000 “likes.”

President Obama’s progressive policies and the tough economic times have inflamed anti-government anger, the same vein of rage into which Donald Trump has tapped during his Republican presidential campaign, said Potok and Mark Pitcavage, who works with the Anti-Defamation League and has monitored extremism for 20 years.

Much of the movement traces its roots to the deadly 1990s confrontations between civilians and federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and in Waco, Tex., that resulted in the deaths of as many as 90. Timothy McVeigh cited both events before he was executed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, and said he had deliberately chosen a building housing federal government agencies.

Now a “Second Wave” is spreading across the country, especially in the West, fueled by the Internet and social media. J.J. MacNab, an author and George Washington University researcher who specializes in extremism, said social media has allowed individuals or small groups such as Soper’s to become far more influential than in the 1990s, when the groups would spread their message through meetings at local diners and via faxes.

The movement received a huge boost from the 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada, where federal agents and hundreds of armed supporters of Bundy faced off in a dispute over the rancher’s refusal to pay fees to graze his cattle on federal land.

When federal agents backed down rather than risk a bloody clash, Bundy’s supporters claimed victory and were emboldened to stage similar armed face-offs last year at gold mines in Oregon and Montana.

In January, dozens of armed occupiers, led by Bundy’s sons Ammon and Ryan, took over the headquarters buildings of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near rural Burns, Ore., an action that resulted in the death of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, an occupier who was shot by state troopers.

Soper has been in the middle of all of it. He says he has tried to be a more moderate voice in a movement best known for its hotheads. He spent a month living in his RV at Burns, trying to talk the occupiers into standing down.

Soper, who is employed mostly in carpentry, works on a shed for a client in Sisters, Ore.

Two days after Soper’s last visit to the refuge, Finicum was killed in an operation in which the Bundys were arrested. An independent local investigation concluded that the shooting was justified, although the U.S. Justice Department is investigating several FBI agents for possible misconduct. Soper considers Finicum’s death “murder.”

That kind of talk is “a big deal,” said Stephanie Douglas, who retired in 2013 as the FBI’s top official overseeing foreign and domestic counterterrorism programs. “Free speech doesn’t make you a terrorist just because you disagree with the government. But if you start espousing violence and radicalizing your own people toward a violent act, the federal government is going to take notice.”

Shortly after the Bundy ranch confrontation, two of Bundy’s supporters who had been at the ranch, Jerad and Amanda Miller, killed two police officers and a civilian and also died in a Las Vegas shooting rampage. Police said the couple left a note on the body of one the officers they had shot point-blank.

It said: “This is the beginning of the revolution.”

B.J. Soper, right rear, and other members of the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard gather for pizzas after a volunteer session picking up trash along a highway.

Until two years ago, B.J. Soper was a creature of ESPN.

Settled down after spending much of his 20s as a professional rodeo rider, he lived with his second wife and their two daughters on a pastoral plot of land with horses, dogs, cats, chickens and a majestic view of the snow-capped Cascades.

He spent his days building sheds and doing other small carpentry jobs, and his weekends watching sports on TV. He played softball. He hunted and fished. He followed his mother’s advice and stayed away from politics: She taught him young that registering to vote was just a way for the government to call you to jury duty.

Then the TV news was filled with footage from the Bundy ranch, and he was shocked. Government officials said Bundy had been abusing grazing rights and refusing to pay his fees for two decades, so they finally sent in armed agents to round up his cattle grazing on federal land. Officials said they had shown great restraint and patience with Bundy. But to Soper, it appeared that they were bullying him.

He wondered: “Do we really have federal armed agents out there pointing guns and threatening to kill people over cows? What in the hell is going on here?”

He started doing research on the Internet and quickly tapped into what seemed to be thousands of voices arguing that the federal government had lost track of the constitutional limits on its power.

“At that point, I had heard of Waco, Texas, and I had heard of Ruby Ridge, and quite honestly, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s just a bunch of crazies up there, and they got in a gunfight with the government,’ ” he said. “But that’s not the truth.”

The more he read, the more convinced he was that the government was “out of control,” and he was amazed by the number of people who felt the same way.

“I was very disappointed with myself,” he said. “I realized that we’re here in the predicament that we’re in as a country because my generation, and my parents’ generation, have done nothing. We let this happen. We got used to our cushy lives where everything’s easy. We have forgotten what’s really important. We’ve forgotten what liberty and freedom really mean.”

It was like being shaken out of a lifetime of slumber, he said: “Before 2014, I was blind. I wasn’t awake. I wasn’t paying attention. But Bundy Ranch woke me up.”

Suddenly, his weekends watching the San Francisco 49ers or the Portland Trail Blazers seemed like anesthesia numbing him against real life.

B.J. Soper, bottom right, addresses a rally in Portland honoring LaVoy Finicum, an occupier who was killed in January by law enforcement officers near the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

“I lived like 90 percent of Americans, oblivious to everything that was going on, from the time I was 18 until the Bundy Ranch happened,” he said. “I just said, ‘I can’t sit back and do nothing. I’ve got to get involved.’ I feel responsible for where we’re at, because I’ve done nothing my entire life.”

His response was to start his Central Oregon Constitutional Guard, which he said was partly to protect against the government, but partly a way to get back to a simpler America.

“As a kid, life was easy,” he says on the group’s website. “No worries. Very little threats. I would ride my bike around all over the neighborhood for hours on end. Play with friends and show back up for dinner without worry.”

Critics say such talk is naive nostalgia for a 1950s America that wasn’t ever really such a homespun paradise in the first place. And they say the groups that have sprung up in response are far more dangerous than Soper and others want to make them seem.

“The idea that he needs to face down the government with weapons I think is really, really wrong,” Potok said. “They don’t really say that, but I think that is what is right under the surface.”

Soper’s research also led him to some of the Internet’s favorite conspiracy theories, including a purported U.N. plot to impose “One World Government.” And Soper, like most in the patriot movement, became a believer.

He suspects that the United Nations, through a program called Agenda 21, wants to reduce the global population from 7 billion to fewer than 1 billion. He said the federal government may be promoting abortions overseas as part of that plot, and also may be deliberately mandating childhood vaccines designed to cause autism because autistic adults are less likely to have children.

Soper said he could not rule out the possibility that the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks. He suspects that the government and the “medical community” have had a cancer cure for years but won’t release it because cancer treatment is too profitable for pharmaceutical companies.

“I’m not saying that’s the case,” he said, “but I like to look at all avenues.”

Soper knows those ideas sound crazy to many people, but, he said with a laugh, “It shows I just don’t trust my government.”

Tom Gorey, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the lead agency at the Bundy ranch, said Soper and the others have “taken an aggressive anti-federal, anti-BLM posture because of [their] bizarre and discredited interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and paranoid views of the federal government.”

Said Potok: “People having nutty ideas is of very little importance except when those ideas begin to affect their actions. An awful lot of people have acted violently in defense of some of these ideas.”

Emergency supplies are stacked in a structure near B.J. Soper's home in Redmond. Members of his group keep 30 days' backup provisions.

Just before dusk one recent evening, 10 people hopped out of pickups on the shoulder of Route 97 in Redmond and began picking up litter near an Adopt-a-Highway sign that said “Central Oregon Constitutional Guard.”

Soper said being a patriot sometimes means spending a couple of hours picking up bottles, cans and even rotting fur from a road-kill deer — all while carrying a concealed .45-caliber pistol on his hip.

“It’s like American Express — don’t leave home without it,” said Soper, working alongside his wife, Lisa Soper, also packing a .45 in her jeans.

Passing drivers beeped and gave thumbs ups.

A white BMW pulled over and the driver approached Soper.

“You guys the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard?” he asked.

“Yeah, we are,” Soper said. “You interested?”

“I saw you guys on Facebook,” said Glenn Golter, 42, a flooring contractor whose clothes were covered with dust after a day’s work. “I like it that you stick up for our constitutional rights.”

Soper invited Golter to join the group for its monthly meeting at a local pizza restaurant right after the cleanup. And just like that, the movement had a new member.

They drove to Straw Hat Pizza, in a strip mall on the edge of this high-desert town of 30,000 people in the Cascade Range foothills. Lisa picked some healthy greens for her husband from the salad bar, while the children and the other guys in the group ate thick, cheesy pizzas.

Across the family-style table, Alex McNeely, 25, a drywaller and “avid YouTuber,” said he became interested in the patriot movement online and joined the group to feel that he was helping to defend the country.

B.J. Soper brushes his 4-year-old daughter Kalley's hair at their home before taking her to day care.

“There’s this D.C. mentality that if you stand up for your rights, you’re dangerous and anti-government,” said McNeely, who has an AK-47 assault rifle tattooed on his forearm. “But if I’m denied my rights, what else can I do? Am I just going to stand there and take it, or am I going to do something?”

In the Constitutional Guard, McNeely said, “I feel what we do is stand up for people who don’t have the means to stand up for themselves. I have an overwhelming desire to help people.”

“I feel what we do is stand up for people who don't have the means to stand up for themselves. I have an overwhelming desire to help people.”

—Alex McNeely

They have passed out more than 2,000 pocket-size copies of the Constitution that Soper said he bought for $500, sent food and clothes to victims of forest fires in Washington state and Oregon and given Christmas presents to more than three dozen needy children.

McNeely considered joining the military when he graduated from high school, but he turned 18 the month Obama was elected in 2008, and, because of Obama’s “socialist” policies, “I wasn’t going to accept him as my commander in chief.”

“I don’t like that he wants to fundamentally change America,” McNeely said.

The group members are conservatives, do not like former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and generally support Donald Trump. Soper said he would prefer just about anyone over Clinton but would not cast a vote for president this year. He said he thinks casting his vote is “a waste of time” because Oregon’s politics are dominated by Democrats.

MacNab, the George Washington University researcher, said Trump has been a powerful recruiting tool for groups angry at the government. “The tea party built little bridges between the fringe and the mainstream,” she said. “With Trump, it’s an 18-lane superhighway. He’s literally telling them they’re right.”

One of the men indicted in the Bundy ranch case is Gerald DeLemus, who was New Hampshire co-chair of Veterans for Trump and was named by the Trump campaign as a New Hampshire alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Left: Soper, founder of the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard, meets with Capt. Cory Darling, left, and Sgt. Devin Lewis of the Bend Police Department on March 3 to discuss the following day's rally to honor LaVoy Finicum, who was killed by law enforcement officers near the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the men who were arrested in connection with its occupation. Right: Soper looks at a copy of the U.S. Constitution at his home. He carries a pocket-size copy of the document with him at all times.
Soper bristles when critics call him anti-government; he said he supports the government but just wants it to follow the Constitution. And he said calling his group “armed” is as relevant as saying its members wear boots, because the Second Amendment gives every American the right to carry a gun.

Soper, who carries a pocket Constitution with him everywhere, said he thinks the Constitution does not give the federal government the right to own land, and that the government’s increasing emphasis on environmental regulations is putting ranchers, miners, loggers and others out of work and devastating local economies.

“We need to be able to raise and grow food,” Soper said. “Wealth comes from the land. I want to take into consideration endangered frogs. But at the same time, that frog can’t be more important than the survival of the human race.”

Everyone in the group keeps 30 days’ worth of food and emergency supplies on hand. Group members learn gardening and raising livestock. They go camping and learn survival tactics, including how to fashion a shelter, find food and water, and make a fire.

McNeely and Lisa Soper are taking an emergency medical technician class to learn to treat wounds, including combat trauma. They all are working on getting ham-radio licenses to communicate in the event that the cellphone network fails.

But a bedrock of their mission is to be an armed and trained paramilitary force. Soper said group members train on “basic infantry” skills: “working a patrol, patrolling with a vehicle, arriving at ‘contact’ and how to protect yourself and escape from that.”

“We are not soldiers,” Soper said. “But we know the basics.”

Soper said the group would be ready for an earthquake or other natural disaster, but he’s most concerned about “man-made disasters” caused by the government.

“I don’t know that it’s all that far-fetched that we have an economic collapse,” he said. “The dollar is a pretty scary investment anymore. China’s buying up all the gold. When people get hungry and thirsty and can’t feed themselves, they get desperate.”

Soper welds a target for use in firearms training.

In April 2015, Soper pulled on his paramilitary camouflage fatigues, picked up his AR-15 rifle and spent a couple of weeks “standing guard” at the Sugar Pine Mine in southwestern Oregon, where miners were having a dispute with the BLM.

The agency had ordered two miners to cease operations because they had built structures at the site in violation of the terms of their permit to mine on federal land.

The miners said the federal government was trying to force them out of business and steal their property. They also said BLM agents who served the cease-and-desist paperwork had pointed guns at them. Gorey, the BLM spokesman, said no agent ever drew a weapon.

Supporters of the miners put out a national call on YouTube for volunteers to help them, and Soper went.

“The government showed up and pointed guns at these miners,” Soper said. “Put yourself in their shoes. How are you going to respond? When you are in fear for your life, you have a right to defend yourself.”

Gorey said agents followed proper procedure at Sugar Pine and did not threaten anyone. “We’re a scapegoat for these militiamen who seem eager to wage war against the federal government,” he said.

A federal judge eventually ordered the BLM not to enforce its order until the matter could be heard in an Interior Department appeals court, where it is pending.

“The last thing I ever want to do is point a gun at another American,” Soper said. “But when the BLM picks up guns against us, when is it okay for us to defend ourselves?”

As Soper sipped a soda at the pizza parlor, his 4-year-old daughter, Kalley, asked him for more quarters to play video games. He handed over a few with a gently teasing roll of his eyes.

“We’re the guys that see the wolves for what they are,” Soper said as watched her bounce away. “And we want to protect the sheep.”

Assault rifles used in a training session by members of the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard.

On a recent Friday morning, Soper had been at his laptop since 5 a.m., typing a furious letter to his county sheriff.

Soper had awoken to the news that government agents had arrested a dozen people in connection with the 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch. That meant a total of 19 people, including Cliven Bundy, now faced obstruction-of-justice and firearms charges that Soper thought were unfair. He was also enraged that Bundy’s sons were still being held without bail over the occupation at the wildlife refuge.

“People are being detained without due process,” he said. “These are not our American values.”

If Bundy and his supporters faced charges, Soper said, so should the federal agents who faced off against them: “Why should law enforcement be held to a different standard?”

“The last thing I want is violence,” Soper said. “But I hope they see that if we continue down this path, we’re going to have more bloodshed in this country.”

Soper said the answer to grievances with the government is negotiation, not violence. But he said that when federal agents draw weapons on citizens without cause, citizens have the right to answer guns with guns.

“We have the right to defend ourselves from imminent danger or death,” Soper said. “I don’t believe that excludes law enforcement. When they’re not doing their duty justly, I think you have a right to defend yourself.”

Soper kept typing, warning that the government had lost “common sense.”

“I pray we find some sense of it again, otherwise a very dark future awaits us, and it is not very far down the road,” he wrote.

The comments at the link are interesting to read....the divide between the left and right is so vast. Anger leads to words, which leads to punches and then to shot's.... the keg is primed and lit.

"Freedom isn't free" --Colonel Walter Hitchcock
“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” General 'Mad Dog' James Mattis
non semper erit aestas- It will not always be summer (be prepared for hard times)!!

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. "-- J. Krishnamurti“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” -- George OrwellTHIS IS WHO I AM: -LINK-

I have issue with this article. It was linked on Drudge this weekend so it had a lot of attention. It bothers me that the defenders of the constitution are armed. Let me clarify, the media shows these people as violent, primed for an armed fight. IMO the article showed them as gun nuts. Some people would appreciate what these people are doing but children and guns puts a negative on the article. I know it sounds goofy but baby steps should have been portrayed. Many could get behind a group that stands with the constitution but the radical spin and arming children makes the adults in this story as extremists. All the news that the media ignores, they have chosen to focus on an armed constitutional group. It should be a focus that these people stand for the constitution being armed and preparing to defend it with arms should be a by product of.

I agree Moto. Is it not possible to protest for firearms and other rights while not visibly carrying a firearm? All this does is make constitutionalists easier to be portrayed as nut jobs by the corrupt media.

I have issue with this article. It was linked on Drudge this weekend so it had a lot of attention. It bothers me that the defenders of the constitution are armed. Let me clarify, the media shows these people as violent, primed for an armed fight. IMO the article showed them as gun nuts. Some people would appreciate what these people are doing but children and guns puts a negative on the article. I know it sounds goofy but baby steps should have been portrayed. Many could get behind a group that stands with the constitution but the radical spin and arming children makes the adults in this story as extremists. All the news that the media ignores, they have chosen to focus on an armed constitutional group. It should be a focus that these people stand for the constitution being armed and preparing to defend it with arms should be a by product of.

I agree Moto. Is it not possible to protest for firearms and other rights while not visibly carrying a firearm? All this does is make constitutionalists easier to be portrayed as nut jobs by the corrupt media.

Concealed carry people...

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BULLTWINKLE!

Open carry is an American tradition...concealed carry was always thought to be a sign of someone sneaky or up-to-no-good, which is why they started restricting the right to carry concealed in most states over a century ago while leaving open carry untouched in most cases. I predicted, when the NRA first started this push to expand concealed carry permitting back in the 80s, that all they were accomplishing is giving credence to permitting in general, making concealed carry seem normal and open carry as somehow abnormal and putting a wedge between those who were "legally permitted" and those of us who never stopped exercising our right to carry openly. Your words make me look prophetic.

If you think open carry makes one a nut job, then YOU are the problem, not the person carrying the firearm. Sorry, but I get really ticked off when I hear this kind of nonsense. We all have the right to carry in whatever manner we choose...no matter what these unconstitutional laws may say...and no matter what hoplophobes who are scared at the sight of a firearm say.

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- Willam Pitt

There is nothing about kids learning to shoot that is radical.....
I think it was more about the articles inference that it might not be safe to allow kids to shoot..... we are talking about an article posted in the Washington Post..... and their effort to paint folks in a bad light. People that just want the government to follow the constitution......

"Freedom isn't free" --Colonel Walter Hitchcock
“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” General 'Mad Dog' James Mattis
non semper erit aestas- It will not always be summer (be prepared for hard times)!!

I have taught my granddaughters, then age 7, to shoot. OK, I started them out with a BB rifle, but then graduated them to a scoped .177 cal. pellet rifle. They also are proficient with my .177 cal. pellet pistol. Now, nearing age 10 they will be shooting my .22LR Winchester M90 pump that my grandfather taught my father and then my father taught me to shoot.

This country has relied so much on the supermarket, the commercial farms, the commercial cattle ranchers, the commercial dairies, the local police, the county, state and city governments to do everything for them. People have forgotten and some will never know self reliance. They will never be able to grasp the idea of self sufficiency. It has become a communal world.

All my children were FireArms Trained, by the time they entered Kindergarten.... They received their OWN First .22LR rifle on their 12th Birthday, and when they Passed the State Hunter Safety Course, AND, the NRA Marksmanship Course, they were then trusted to keep the Ammunition for their Weapon.... At age 21, OR when they Married, which ever came first, they were given their First HandGun, as part of their Present.... Our Grandchildren are being brought Up in the same Family Tradition...

Bruce in alaska (BTPost) An Atheist will never be able to say, "I TOLD YOU SO"!! ....

I am not saying open carry is for nut jobs but to the average sheep it looks that way. I am for constitutional carry for all states and do concealed carry myself. However, given the times that we live In I do not open carry. In this day and age with the media the way it is preception is reality to them. I do not want to be one of the ones responsible for giving the anti gunners more "ammo" to use on politicians to further erode our rights. I also believe in teaching my kids to shoot but i am not about to let reports put pictures of it in some liberal hack newspaper.

It does not matter what you all did and who in your family shoots and at what age. You will never win over anyone if you do not step back and look at how this article is viewed by someone who is not you but the typical American. I said before this article was headlined on Drudge. Headlining on Drudge means almost 21 million people seeing that article. The first two pictures of the article shows a cute little girl. Article makes these Patriots as violent, preppers and they have kids. I bet some read that article and thought those nuts should have their kids taken away. Sounds horrid but the marketing applied to this article is good and deceptive.

It does not matter what you all did and who in your family shoots and at what age. You will never win over anyone if you do not step back and look at how this article is viewed by someone who is not you but the typical American. I said before this article was headlined on Drudge. Headlining on Drudge means almost 21 million people seeing that article. The first two pictures of the article shows a cute little girl. Article makes these Patriots as violent, preppers and they have kids. I bet some read that article and thought those nuts should have their kids taken away. Sounds horrid but the marketing applied to this article is good and deceptive.

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Exactly right......

"Freedom isn't free" --Colonel Walter Hitchcock
“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” General 'Mad Dog' James Mattis
non semper erit aestas- It will not always be summer (be prepared for hard times)!!

It is important whenever gun rights advocates and defenders of the Constitution present themselves to the public they stress the last thing they want is bloodshed. Unless they make it clear violence will be their last method of fighting for their rights and they will always use peaceful means first, they will come off as dangerous nuts. We should keep in mind the fact the media are not our friends and are only interested in doing us and our cause harm. They don't do reports on gun owners, hunters, freedom groups, etc, to make us look good.

A government with the means to give you everything you want has the power to take everything you have, including your freedom.

I am not saying open carry is for nut jobs but to the average sheep it looks that way. I am for constitutional carry for all states and do concealed carry myself. However, given the times that we live In I do not open carry. In this day and age with the media the way it is preception is reality to them. I do not want to be one of the ones responsible for giving the anti gunners more "ammo" to use on politicians to further erode our rights. I also believe in teaching my kids to shoot but i am not about to let reports put pictures of it in some liberal hack newspaper.

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The average sheep looks at it that way because certain alleged 'responsible' firearms owners have helped give them that perception by both accepting permitting and looking down their noses at people who open carry.

I don't conduct my affairs worrying about what ammo I might give a bunch of nuts and thugs who are going to make up their own ammo no matter what I do...I prefer to I conduct my affairs to lead by example...in this case that a firearm in the hands of a law-abiding citizen, concealed or not, is NOT a threat to anyone but the sanity of hoplophobes and the evil intentions of tyrants and criminals.

It does not matter what you all did and who in your family shoots and at what age. You will never win over anyone if you do not step back and look at how this article is viewed by someone who is not you but the typical American. I said before this article was headlined on Drudge. Headlining on Drudge means almost 21 million people seeing that article. The first two pictures of the article shows a cute little girl. Article makes these Patriots as violent, preppers and they have kids. I bet some read that article and thought those nuts should have their kids taken away. Sounds horrid but the marketing applied to this article is good and deceptive.

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Today's "typical American" was created because we went along with the brainwashing and bent over backwards trying to appease the anti-gun nuts. Obviously decades of trying to look all peaceful and appeasing and responsible has accomplished nothing but the continued erosion of our rights...and you know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result. Perhaps we should have put the fear of ticked off, armed citizens into these schumcks decades ago, rather than letting them perceive our attempts at compromise and appeasement as signs of weakness and unwillingness to act. I for one think it is time that these people understood, in no uncertain terms, that we will only be pushed so far before we act...and they ain't gonna like our acting.

It is important whenever gun rights advocates and defenders of the Constitution present themselves to the public they stress the last thing they want is bloodshed. Unless they make it clear violence will be their last method of fighting for their rights and they will always use peaceful means first, they will come off as dangerous nuts. We should keep in mind the fact the media are not our friends and are only interested in doing us and our cause harm. They don't do reports on gun owners, hunters, freedom groups, etc, to make us look good.

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The last thing I want is bloodshed....but I will not rule out bloodshed if pushed to it. Never tell an opponent what you won't do. Freedom isn't about looking good...and just like freedom itself is not always pretty, the defense of freedom isn't always pretty either.

Last edited by a moderator: May 23, 2016

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- Willam Pitt

The last thing I want is bloodshed....but I will not rule out bloodshed if pushed to it. Never tell an opponent what you won't do. Freedom isn't about looking good...and just like freedom itself is not always pretty, the defense of freedom isn't always pretty either.

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I didn't post that anyone should say they would never fight for their rights and freedoms, but that they will not be the first to resort to violence. Anyone who wants to fire the first shot in Civil War Two will also be the first to die, and they will die alone. Not only that, the "civil war" they thought they were starting will not happen. If it does happen, it will be long after they are forgotten by their own family and have nothing to do with them or what they did. The spark that starts the next civil war will be something the government does. The idea is to avoid that if possible.

A government with the means to give you everything you want has the power to take everything you have, including your freedom.

I agree Moto. Is it not possible to protest for firearms and other rights while not visibly carrying a firearm? All this does is make constitutionalists easier to be portrayed as nut jobs by the corrupt media.Concealed carry people...

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I could not agree more! I mean how did the homosexuals (1% of the pop.) get every show on TV with a queer on it? How did they get all the laws passed and get special rights not enjoyed by the other 99% of the pop.? How did the trannies (0.01% pop) get laws passed to use either bathrooms and special rights not enjoyed by the other 99% of the pop.? Why obviously by being low key and not acting openly of course! By NOT marching in the streets, by NOT having sex in the streets (yeah I actually saw that too, sex in the streets, everyone thought it was just sooooo nice and heart warming. Hemorrhoids the size of a bunch of grapes growing out his ... er... rear. A photo of that should be mandatory in every HS sex class to show the joys of that life style! I mean who wouldn't want that?), by NOT causing a fuss, by NOT rioting and creating a stir. They did it the same way the civil rights did it, by sitting down with the people opposed to them and having a reasoned and calm discussion and a meeting of minds. No violence, no causing problems, just plain reason and kindness. Just like the Nazis had with the jews in WWII, it was all tolerance and light, every was happy and joy filled the land. Er... didn't it?

It's a RIGHT people! If you are afraid to USE your RIGHTS, you got NO RIGHTS! Yes, it really is THAT SIMPLE! USE IT OR LOSE IT!

History is written by the victorious....we as a people, have much work to do!!

"Freedom isn't free" --Colonel Walter Hitchcock
“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” General 'Mad Dog' James Mattis
non semper erit aestas- It will not always be summer (be prepared for hard times)!!

. Article makes these Patriots as violent, preppers and they have kids. I bet some read that article and thought those nuts should have their kids taken away. Sounds horrid but the marketing applied to this article is good and deceptive.

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Yes, and it's good that you can perceive this strategy. This is the manner in which the corporate media operates; there is always going to be a spin to reality.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. "-- J. Krishnamurti“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” -- George OrwellTHIS IS WHO I AM: -LINK-